CHARLES LAMB

Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.

We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.

The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.

I have had playmates, I have had companions; In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days - All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.

Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.

Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.

I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.

The beggar wears all colors fearing none.

Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts.

I could never hate anyone I knew.

The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking.

She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book.

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.

Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.

My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.

I'd like to grow very old as slowly as possible.

New Year's Day is every man's birthday.

Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book.

Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds.